Authors: Andrew Derham
As Hart and Redpath arrived back at the station, Redpath spotted Arthur Rhodes getting into his car. Hart let the window down and called out.
‘I thought I’d missed you, Harry,’ said the big man as the three of them stepped inside the building together. ‘I wanted to bring you something over myself, not leave it at reception.’
‘You’ll be spoiling me, Arthur. A senior forensic pathologist must have more to do than play postman.’
As they walked along the corridor to Hart’s office, Redpath was given a job to do. ‘See if you can track down the lab reports on the boy’s computer and his rooms, will you Darren. And if they haven’t done them yet, tell them to get a move on, it’s been nearly three days.’
When Rhodes was inside his office, with the door safely closed, Hart rolled his swivel chair to the front of his desk so there would be no barrier separating the pair of them. Rhodes lowered himself into a tatty but comfy bamboo chair, olive-green cushions supporting his back and behind.
‘So what news have you managed to find out for me about poor Nicola Brown, Arthur?’
‘I’m not sure whether it’s what you want or not, but there’s no news at all really. What little there is you’ll find in here,’ he said, passing over a foolscap envelope to add to the pile on Hart’s desk. ‘The post-mortem said the girl died due to strangulation by hanging. And there’s no doubt about it.’
‘No complications? No broken neck? No injuries inflicted before she died?’
Rhodes shook his head. ‘Death was due to strangulation, almost certainly while conscious, nothing else. This was a hanging where the victim had only fallen through a short drop, Harry. There was no great jolt to break the neck, like you’d get from a substantial fall, and there was no heart attack or contributory cause of death that the pathologist could find. Nothing in the blood, no drugs or sedatives or anything like that.’
‘So that means she just hung there until she suffocated, then? That’s a heck of a grim way to go.’ Hart was used to hearing bleak tales of macabre death, but the less gruesome the better as far as he was concerned. He hoped for a morsel of news to tell him that the manner of Nicola Brown’s passing was not unspeakably awful. He was out of luck.
‘I’m afraid it is. It’s ghastly. It probably took a good minute or two before she passed out due to lack of oxygen as the supply to her brain was cut off by constriction of her windpipe and the blood vessels of her neck. There was considerable bruising on the neck, due to her thrashing about on the rope, no doubt, which suggests she was awake as she hung there. The discolouration was at an angle to the circumference of her neck, so that helps lay to rest any notion that she may have been strangled first and then hung up.’
‘Anything else?’ enquired Hart gloomily.
‘Nothing of a harmful nature in stomach or lungs. No other marks on the skin to indicate a struggle, and they went over her with a fine toothcomb.’
‘Could they have missed anything?’
‘You can always miss something, Harry. There must be an infinite number of ways for a human being to die, and that means it’s impractical to search for everything that can kill a person.’
‘What did they give as the time of death?’
‘Early hours of the morning. Best guess between two and three o’clock.’
‘So she got herself out of bed in the middle of the night to kill herself? That’s a bit odd.’
‘There’s always something odd about someone taking their own life, it’s a decidedly odd thing to do.’ They sat thoughtfully for a while, until Rhodes broke the silence. ‘Harry, I believe this tree is the wrong one to be barking up. Everything here is consistent with suicide.’
‘A rotten way to kill yourself though, isn’t it?’ Images painted themselves in Hart’s mind, pictures of the poor girl kicking and juddering, bobbing and spinning, choking in agony as her fresh life emptied away while she dangled from a noose.
‘Absolutely awful,’ agreed Rhodes. ‘Still, the choices are a bit limited, of course, there’s no truly joyous way to do the deed. Slit wrists? Painful, and there’s loads of blood, which puts some people off. And it hardly ever works anyway. Overdose? Sure, not too bad, but uncertain and may leave you as a living vegetable instead of a dead corpse. Throw yourself in front of a train? Only if you hate yourself and want to humiliate your own body.’
‘So there’s a countless number of possible ways to meet your Maker, but only a few of them are actually chosen by the people who set up the appointments themselves?’
‘That’s about it. And hanging rides somewhere near the top of the popularity chart.’
‘Thanks Arthur, you’ve been a real help,’ remarked Hart unconvincingly.
‘What’s set you on this path anyway, Harry? Just that a suicide and a murder involving two kids at the same school are too much of a coincidence? Is that it?’
‘That’s what got me started, but there’s a bit more to it than that. I rang up Cambridge and got the rundown on her application for medicine. There was no doubt about it, she would have got in, unless she’d turned out to be a complete fruitcake at interview, but we know from what everyone’s said about her that she was articulate and a joy to have around.
‘Kids nowadays have to write a personal statement, a bit about why they want to go there and why the universities would be daft not to have them. This girl’s was one of the best the Dean of Admissions had ever read, and they get some top minds applying to that college. She passed ten exams in Year 11, the lot of them A-star grades, played the flute and piano, was a one-woman Red Cross Society in charity work, and had great references from her teachers.’
Rhodes finished for him. ‘So why does a youngster with so much to look forward to kill herself a year before she goes off to fulfil her dream?’
‘Exactly. And because the evidence points so strongly to suicide, I’m not sure anybody’s asked that question. Not forcefully enough, anyway.’
‘And your boss won’t let
you
ask it because the Met’s already put the case to bed?’
‘Right. Like I’ve said before, Arthur, you should have been a copper.’
‘Well, I’m not, and poor old Sebastian Emmer’s not the only person to die in Lockingham this week, so I’d better get back to my slab.’
*****
Hart thanked his mate again, asked him to shut the door on the way out, and wheeled his chair back behind his desk. And then he embarked upon an enterprise which was the most risky undertaking of a career in which he had never been afraid to stick his neck out. But if he were caught doing this, he’d lose his proverbial head, and he could forget about ever working on a murder case again, or any other case for that matter. For a year or two, he’d be sitting on his backside shuffling paper from one tray to another until he couldn’t stand the boredom and indignity any more. Then he’d be shown the front door and walk straight through it, right after listening to oily platitudes and polite clapping over drinks, and all the jolly speeches kindly spoken to celebrate his distinguished career. However, this affected adulation wouldn’t quite make up for his reduced pension.
Hart lifted a clear plastic folder from his desk and skimmed his finger down the names of the pupils who attended Highdean School until it stopped at the best friend of Nicola Brown. Then he pushed his hand into his right trouser pocket and pulled out his personal mobile.
And he used it to dial the Egyptian embassy and make an appointment to visit the father of Hiba Massaoud.
‘I’ve got all those reports about Sebastian Emmer you wanted, Sir,’ announced Redpath triumphantly as he entered his boss’s office just after lunch. ‘I had to exert all my authority, of course,’ he joked. ‘The boffs said that if they were for Chief Inspector Hart then he would just have to wait until after Christmas, they were too busy for the likes of him right now. I told them they were for me and so they’d better hand them over pronto.’
‘Good job, Darren. If we need any behinds kicking again, then we’ll send you in to be the bad guy.’ Hart wondered if he had been a bit hard on the lad of late. It was good to have the chance to give him a bit of credit, even though he knew the lab boys and girls were usually pretty obliging on important cases like these. ‘Let’s have the forensics on his rooms first.’
Redpath handed him the documents as he sat down.
‘So what have we got here?’ muttered Hart as he extracted the papers from yet another manila envelope. He answered his own question with disappointment. ‘Nothing. Absolutely naff all. Both his rooms, at home and school, pristine except for a bit of cocaine on his pillows due to a touch of rhinorrhoea, which is to be expected.’
‘Sir?’
‘Runny nose to the likes of you and me.’
‘So he didn’t do drugs there, then? He restricted himself to clubs and places like that?’
‘Looks like it.’ Hart straightened his back as his eyes scanned the report regarding Sebastian Emmer’s computer. ‘This is interesting, though. Very interesting. There are a few messages written on the machine. They’d been chucked into the recycle bin and then deleted, but the computer boffs got them back easily enough, of course.’
‘What’s in them? Are they written to anyone we’ve heard of?’
‘They certainly are. Here’s an example of the author’s literary genius.’ Hart read aloud:
Dear Spotty Nick,
You don’t really think I really wanted to screw you do you. In fact your’e the ugliest girl in the school. You’ll never get married because your’e too ugly, nobody would want you. You’ll just be a stupid doctor in some stupid hospital and you’ll die a lonely old cow. Nobody will care.
Hart placed the paper on his desk. ‘Further illustration of Sebastian’s evident charm and considerable intellect. He was a careful lad, though. Doesn’t do drugs at home or in his room at school, and bins anything on his computer which might be iffy.’
‘Wait a minute, Sir! Spotty Nick! You don’t think that could be Nicola Brown, do you?’
‘Well it could be, Darren, it could be.’ Sometimes it really was difficult to avoid being condescending to Redpath, and Hart was pleased with himself that he had managed to steer clear of it this time. His sergeant’s face looked so proud that he had hit on an insight he believed to be accessible to only the finest minds, and it really would have been unnecessarily cruel to ruin his pleasure.
Redpath continued to beam. ‘Does this mean the Nicola Brown suicide is back on the agenda?’
‘Nope, definitely not, there’s no reason for it to be. We know she killed herself. We know how she did it. So that’s the end of it. There’s nothing left for us to investigate.’
‘But if she was pushed into doing it by Sebastian Emmer, that could give us a clue who murdered him. Someone out for revenge on her behalf.’
‘Fair point, Darren. Fair point.’ And it was. That would be very neat indeed and, for the first time in this case, they had a motive which was plausible. ‘I’m not saying there isn’t some connection between the two deaths, just that we know Nicola committed suicide and we know how she carried it out, so all our work’s been done for us in her case. And even if they hadn’t seen any notes like this one, the coppers who investigated Nicola’s death must have known Sebastian was bullying her.’
‘I’d better be going, then.’ Redpath stood up and walked to the door, feeling very pleased with his morning’s work. ‘By the way, Sir.’
‘Go on.’
‘What are you doing for Christmas? Any offers? Maybe an invitation from Patricia Luft?’ There was a roguish smile on his face. ‘She’s a good looker and although she’s definitely posh crumpet you’ve got to be fair to her, she’s not stuck-up. A rich, lonely, classy divorcee with the hots for you. It doesn’t get better than that. And, don’t forget, I’m an authority on women.’
‘Leave it out, Darren.’ Hart moved away from the subject. ‘I’ve not decided what I’m up to yet. But I like a nice quiet Christmas, anyway. I’m not one for parties and all that sort of nonsense. I’ll probably get in a particularly decent bottle of Scotch as a treat and I’ll be well happy with that.’
‘Just make sure you have a good time, that’s all Sir.’
‘Thanks, Darren, I will.’ Not a bad lad really, thought Hart. It was just that he sometimes seemed to stash his brains inside his trousers.
No card had arrived yet from Mrs Kanjaria confirming her invitation to Christmas dinner. That was a blessing, anyway. Maybe she had just shot her mouth off in the butcher’s and was now regretting inviting him. It seemed like that wouldn’t be an altogether astonishing phenomenon – she could certainly talk, that was for sure.
Considering the time of year and that it was early on a Friday evening, the drive down to London wasn’t too bad. The usual suspects were causing a bit of trouble, of course, like the end of the A1(M) where it unloads its cargo of traffic onto the lesser roads which scavenge from its demise, but the whole drive from Lockingham to Mayfair only took an hour and a half. Of course, Hart would have to pay the congestion charge and the parking meter out of his own pocket; it would take a better liar than Harry to explain that lot appearing on his monthly expenses sheet.
It had been good of Ibrahim Massaoud to agree to see him at all. He worked as an Egyptian diplomat, a trade attache or something, although they all called themselves that, and he could tell the police to go to hell if he wanted to. The same went for his family. They all enjoyed an identical immunity from the strictures of the law, and could commit every crime on the statute book, from flicking a toffee wrapper out of the car window to murdering Sebastian Emmer, or any other poor soul they fancied bumping off on a whim, and just walk away with a merry chuckle. But Hart was fortunate in his host tonight. In their three and a half years in England, the Massaouds hadn’t picked up a parking ticket between them, and they would have paid it if they had.
Where Ibrahim Massaoud did draw the line was that he was insistent Hart was not going to speak to his daughter about her best friend’s suicide. She had already been through purgatory over that whole business and he wasn’t having it all brought back to her now. But he assured the chief inspector that he knew every detail of Hiba’s ordeal and would relate it to him faithfully. That was okay with Hart, he didn’t want to speak to the girl anyway. If he did, the news of their conversation would travel around the school, into Annalee Hargreaves’ ears and zoom straight off to the Chief. No, this arrangement suited him just fine.
Hart wished he could have just got the information he needed from the Met, just have a normal conversation with them like professionals who were on the same side. But there was no chance of that after Commander Sturgess’s phone call to the Chief. He didn’t think the Met were inept or stupid as a police force. Well, no more than anyone else did. What rankled about them was that they thought his own outfit exhibited both of those failings. They awarded themselves all those fancy ranks, their commanders and commissioners and whatnot. They were inflated and felt superior and would see Rodgers boot him into the boondocks if they knew he was snooping around on their patch, looking into a case they had investigated and wrapped up months ago. So Harry had to come down here on a Friday night, shove an extortionate number of pound coins into a parking meter, and risk his professional life. And here he was, standing slap bang in some of the most costly land in the realm, introducing himself through the intercom and then walking up to the third-floor apartment.
And what an apartment it was; it made the Emmers’ place look like a peasants’ hut. You could have drowned in the living room carpet, the four chandeliers dangling from the distant ceiling each consumed the electricity of the average town and both fireplaces were constructed of marble and jade. On the walls hung originals of fine, proud horses and gorgeous desert scenes: camels and sunsets, wavy dunes and lush oases, Bedouins and caravan trails. The display cabinets held exquisite porcelain, much of it Arab, all of it expensive. But it wasn’t just pricey. It was class. To the practised, artistic eye or to the gaze of the cultural plebeian, the whole place was class.
Hart was invited to sit at the side of the room which overlooked the street, although the plush velvet curtains had long been drawn closed against the winter outside. Mr Massaoud sat opposite him with a small coffee table standing between them. He was in his mid-forties and dressed himself with the bearing of wealth and success, as he had done quite naturally all his life. His open-necked royal blue shirt contrasted agreeably with the casual bronze jacket he wore, the left sleeve riding up just enough to show half of his thick gold watch.
‘How may I help you, Chief Inspector?’ His English carried the slightest trace of an Arab accent, just the tiniest of throaty and nasal inflections, which served to make his demeanour even more cultured.
‘I wonder if you would be kind enough to once again run through the circumstances in which your daughter found Nicola Brown, Mr Massaoud.’
‘I suspect your interest is renewed due to the unfortunate incident this week. A most terrible occurrence, particularly in view of what happened to Nicola. How is it that tragedy can strike twice so swiftly at ones so young?’ he mused aloud.
‘I simply think it prudent to investigate any possible connection between the two deaths, that’s all Mr Massaoud, although I’ve no reason whatsoever to suspect any such link at the moment. It would be remiss of me not to be perfectly satisfied, however.’
‘Indeed it would. And you cannot ask your colleagues, the officers who interviewed my daughter a few months ago?’
Hart managed to avoid shuffling in his leather seat. However, although the chestnut eyes upon him were inscrutable, they detected his discomfort. But Hart had made his choice and now he would have to live with it or die by it.
‘No, I can’t Mr Massaoud. I’m not from this area, I’m from the police authority in which Sebastian was killed, not that in which Nicola committed suicide. And it would be better if I got as near as possible to the source to gain my information, to obtain it first-hand.’
‘I agree with you, Chief Inspector Hart, that there is nothing more reassuring than obtaining information on your own behalf. You know then that it is to be trusted.’ And then he delivered a bonus. ‘And I think that this conversation between us should be kept private. It would be unfortunate if your colleagues were to misunderstand the reason for your visit to my home. Perhaps they would somehow confuse your commendable thoroughness with doubting their conclusions.’ Harry felt the urge to give him a hug. Or at least buy him a pint.
The conversation was briefly interrupted by a maid carrying a silver tray bearing some sweet pastries, wafer mints and a golden coffee pot, with its long curved spout, oval handle and tall grace making it implausible that it fulfilled the same function as the tatty old vessel Hart had at home. The maid set the tray onto the table and poured out two cups of thick, steamy beverage before passing them to the two men, the guest first.
After she had left them, the diplomat’s mood became deep and serious.
‘Let me tell you of the circumstances of my daughter’s discovery, Chief Inspector, although it pains me to reflect on it yet again.’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘The tragedy occurred one weekend more than three months ago, just after the long summer break. Hiba had been home to visit us one Friday and was returning to school on the Sunday morning. Nicola had stayed at school over the weekend to complete some of her work. The school allows the students to use the facilities during part of the holidays and at the weekends, you see, and the older students can come and go as they wish, as long as they let the teaching staff know in good time what their intentions are regarding accommodation. I believe this is an excellent system, as long as you have a son or daughter you can trust not to abuse it, of course.’
Hart tasted his own coffee. It definitely wasn’t like the brew he was used to. It was very strong and very sweet with a hint of some herb he didn’t recognise, but pleasant all the same.
‘Hiba went into the room they shared and there was no sign of her friend, even though she called out her name. That wasn’t necessarily surprising; Nicola could have been in the library, downstairs watching television, or merely have slipped out for some purpose. Hiba unpacked her weekend bag and lay on her bed for a while, just to collect her thoughts and plan her day. Then she got up to visit the bathroom.’ The envoy placed his small cup and saucer on the correspondingly petite table in front of him, getting them out of the way as the awful moment approached. ‘She opened the restroom door and was confronted with the spectacle of her friend hanging by a rope around her neck. Her head was tipped forward and her eyes bulged and stared and her tongue was hanging out. Nicola’s face was a sickly white but her tongue was a definite blue and was bloated, while the consequences of her bodily functions lay beneath her.’ The dark features remained composed, yet his face displayed an anguish of the most fervent intensity as he closed his eyes. ‘What a sight for my daughter to behold, Mr Hart. What a dreadful sight. All the while she was happily daydreaming in their bedroom, her dear friend was hanging dead by a rope a few metres away.’ Massaoud paused to collect himself. ‘You can see why I didn’t want Hiba to relate this to you. To this day she is utterly distraught.’
‘Of course. And you’re more than kind to put yourself through it instead.’ One look at the diplomat’s face would have told anybody that. But Massaoud didn’t agree.
‘Oh no, Chief Inspector, you’re wrong there. Quite wrong. Nicola Brown was my daughter’s best friend, and if there is anything I can do that may help, even the tiniest thing, then I will not shirk my duty. It is not kindness. It is merely an attempt to be a decent human being.’
Hart nodded gently before continuing. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but exactly what was the mechanism by which Nicola was hanging?’
‘She had a rope around her neck.’ The absurdity of that initial statement was lost on neither of them, but they could only let it go. ‘The rope was passed over the rail that held the shower curtain and then tied to the tap. The cold tap on the sink.’
‘And what was she standing on? How did she manage to drop herself?’
‘She was on the edge of the empty bath, it is old and has a very wide surround. There were books lying in the bath.’
‘School books?’ Hart seemed surprised at this information, but he didn’t say why.
‘Yes. They were her chemistry, mathematics and biology books. I can remember this story every bit as well as Hiba does; I can recall every tiny detail. The presumption is that Nicola stood on the stacked books and then kicked them away. She wouldn’t have fallen more than a few centimetres, her toes were just above the edge of the bath.’ Massaoud held his thumb and forefinger the requisite distance apart to emphasise the minuteness of the dimension. ‘She was so close to having something to stand on. There were just these two or three centimetres between life and death.’
‘But couldn’t she have used her hands to pull on the rope, to lift herself up? I know she committed suicide, but I don’t think that even somebody with an absolute determination to die would be able to stop themselves changing their mind, not when they’re actually confronted with such an awful death.’
‘Nicola knew of that, of course. But she had handcuffs on her wrists and they were fastened with her hands behind her back. They were of a kind that just snap shut. I don’t know why they are allowed to sell such things.’
‘So Nicola stood on her books with the noose around her neck, then she clicked the handcuffs shut behind her back before kicking the books away,’ repeated Hart to confirm the story. ‘And what happened next, Mr Massaoud? What did Hiba do?’
‘After her shock, Hiba ran downstairs to summon help.’
‘And who did she find?’
‘Ms Rand. She was the housemistress on duty that morning. They both ran up the stairs and Hiba’s teacher took charge. She held Nicola up while my daughter undid the knot at the tap, and then she laid her in the bath.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘Hiba didn’t want her friend to just hang there by her neck, she couldn’t bear the thought of that. Ms Rand also thought she should be taken down just in case there was a chance she still had life. She checked for vital signs but, of course, to no avail. Imagine if she were still alive and they had left her like she was, even though there was a chance of saving her. No, they made the right decision, although I understand the police would have preferred to view the scene exactly as it was when Nicola died.’
‘Who was next to come into the room?’
‘Ms Rand and Hiba went into the bedroom where they hugged each other and cried together. Just for a few moments. And then Ms Rand telephoned the emergency services and Mrs Hargreaves, in that order. And, of course, others then took over and my wife and I came to collect Hiba and sat with her while she helped the police.’
‘Is there anything else you believe to be relevant? Anything at all? It’s amazing how it’s the little things which turn out to be the glue which holds the whole puzzle together.’
‘There was nothing else out of the ordinary at all. There was just a suicide note which Nicola had left on her bedside cabinet. Hiba didn’t notice that, there was no reason for her to look for it, of course.’
‘Do you know anything about this note, Mr Massaoud?’
‘No, it was addressed to her parents. I just know that Nicola wrote it on a computer at school.’
‘How’s that?’
‘All of the students have a password which allows them access to their own folder on the computer network. They can write and save their essays and other work on the network, using any of the machines in the school, they are all connected to each other. The letter was found in Nicola’s folder. Nobody else can place anything inside or look into a student’s folder, except for the Headteacher, who has access to the complete network. So, you see, the note was written by either Nicola or Mrs Hargreaves, and I think that the latter possibility would be regarded as laughable in less tragic circumstances.’